ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT

The project involved over a hundred founders and co-founders of start-ups, divided into three sub-groups based on the results achieved by the entrepreneurial initiatives they led.

The first group (High Growth) comprised start-up leaders who had been in business for at least five years and had reached a consolidated scale-up phase. Some of these had already completed exit operations, corporate integration or company sales. The second group (Stalled) comprised promoters of initiatives who, despite developing and launching interesting business ideas, had not managed to achieve structured growth. The third group (Transitional) represented companies with promising initial results, but whose development had not yet been fully consolidated.

All participants were given Hogan assessment tests (HPI, HDS and MVPI), followed by in-depth interviews and individual feedback sessions. The results were analyzed at both the individual profile level and from a comparative perspective between the three groups. This was done with the aim of identifying recurrences, divergences and possible critical factors in the transition from the initial entrepreneurial phase to leadership capable of sustaining growth and governance evolution.

FINAL Project deliverable was a strategic summary document for the Sponsors, translating the insights that had emerged into operational guidelines for future assessments and for building more effective leadership teams with complementary skills.

EVIDENCE EMERGED

A comparison of the three sub-groups revealed distinctive differences in leadership maturity.

In the Highgrowth group, which was associated with well-established growth paths, a combination of strong results orientation, rapid decision-making and a pronounced inclination towards risk-taking was observed more frequently. In the Transitional group, these elements were present, but in a more balanced way, with greater attention to organizational and relational impacts. In the Stalled group, despite the presence of entrepreneurial motivation, discontinuities in strategic execution and difficulties sustaining growth pressure over time were observed more frequently, as were fluctuations in decision-making and more cautious attitudes.

This evidence was not intended to construct a prescriptive model, but rather to provide a useful key to interpreting individual performance and behavioral dynamics in the different stages of fast-growing companies’ development in a more informed and predictive way.